You do realize that figuring out someone's SSN is as easy as, well, a 1 in a thousand guess pretty much. First three digits usually correspond to where you were born. I was born in Maine for example, and my first three digits are 005. (It's organized geographically, think about your first three and where you were born in relation to the entire country. Numbers start at zero in the Northeast, and end in the West). You can look this up on Google and learn people's geographic first 3 numbers.

The second two digits correspond to the year you were born (or when you were issued your SSN number). You can find websites for your state that narrows this down to a certain set of numbers (Now I will be ficticious and say that my middle two digits are 29). Everyone who lived in my area of Maine and is my age will have this (or perhaps a 38 or maybe 17), again, all listed on websites. The last four digits are randomized. Ironically, for many security purposes, you are asked "what are the last four digits of your social security number?" which are the most VALUABLE private digits! If someone has your name (and an address makes it even easier) and the year you were born, boom, your identity will be stolen.

My point being is that I'd much rather just send my SSN number (not via their site, but via any other way, including snail mail)... btw, who is going to randomly open up a letter KNOWING that your SSN number is in there? geesh. Back to point... I'd much rather send LMT my SSN than doing many other forms of business transaction. When you go out to eat, do you ever pay by card? I could have a CC number memorized in about 7 seconds. Add in the expiration date and security code, 10 seconds total, tops. And of course there are millions of other scenarios than just a waiter stealing your CC info (and just skip the whole "my CC protects me", I know, just giving one scenario of how someone can steal).

And this is not just aimed at you chrisgeleven. It's just people, really, come on. Is LMT going to risk everything just to steal some SSN numbers? Is somebody going to hack into LMT and steal the numbers? Doubtful.

My trip is in 9 days and I am not going to let a SSN number scare me. I don't think that we'll have to pay taxes on our trip, and we have 14 months to deal with figuring out if we "bought" a hotel room or "won" a hotel room. I think LMT wants to scare as many people as possible, and I'm sure it's working. I bet 50% of people will cancel their trips.

Just keep an eye on your credit reports. Isn't there a way to do a "Lifelock" for yourself, where if anybody tries to open up credit in your name, you must first be contacted via phone to verify that it is YOU who wants to open up credit?

And lastly, in this economy, who in their right mind is GIVING out credit anymore? Steal my identity, what in the world could you possibly do with it?

Thank you and cheers to all.